


Wohlbehalten

by AnaliseGrey



Series: Along the Way [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Bad guys doing bad things, Blood, Broken Bones, Episode: c02e018 Whispers of War, Gen, I assume Yasha is out...Yasha-ing., Spoilers, Torture, amateur zemnian, brief mention of part of Caleb's backstory, but the Mighty Nein are to the rescue of their wizard!, could be seen as pre-widomauk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 04:20:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15598158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaliseGrey/pseuds/AnaliseGrey
Summary: Caleb has been missing for a week when they track him down.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, another Critical Role fic. I'm drowning in season two...I just finished episode 18, and I had some serious feels. Which meant I had to write.

“Why is it always  _ caves _ ?” Jester pouts at the entrance to the cave system. “If you’re going to go through all that trouble to steal money, why not live somewhere  _ nice _ ?”

Molly can’t help but agree. “Like a villa, or at least a nice cottage, yeah?”

Jester hums in assent, pressing a hand to Molly’s arm as she passes, and he feels the odd flare of mental quiet he associates with the Traveler’s blessing.

A little over a week ago, they’d been hired by the township of Snowdrop Hollow to root out a local band of thieves. Things had actually been going pretty well, until they’d had a confrontation with the group at an abandoned mill. In the midst of the fight, the thieves had retreated, and it wasn’t until the dust settled that they came to the realization that Caleb was gone. They’d searched the area, but the only trace they’d found was one of his component pouches.

Caleb has been missing for a week when they finally track him down, and now they’re outside the cave system, preparing to get their wizard back. From what they’ve been able to gather from the thief they’d caught and interrogated, the band had initially wanted leverage on the Mighty Nein, but had quickly changed their mind; having a pet wizard could be helpful, after all.

Molly doesn’t want to think of what they’ve been doing over the last week in an effort to tame their new pet.

They hit a hub within the cave system, tunnels running off in three directions.

_ Fucking  _ caves.

“I think,” Fjord started, “That unless you feel otherwise, we oughta split up. We know there’s only so many of them, and it might take too long for all of us to search each cave, and we’re going for the element of surprise. Who wants to go with who?”

They end up splitting off, Jester and Nott, Beau and Fjord, and Molly on his own. He’s confident enough in his abilities both in combat and in yelling that if something happens he’ll be able to summon help.

His tunnel goes for a few hundred feet at a slight descent, the air around him growing cooler the farther along he goes. He’s approaching a curve of the tunnel and realizes there’s light flickering up ahead. He slows, and makes an extra effort to be cautious.

Molly creeps around the curve of the tunnel and is amazed to find a lit torch in a wall bracket, and a walled off area with a wooden door set in it, a bolt locking it closed and a small barred window at the top.

Well that isn’t something you see every day in a cave.

There’s no guard, which gives him pause, but he listens intently, and just under the dripping of water nearby he can hear faint breathing, broken occasionally by small sounds of pain. It’s a force of will that lets him keep his head as he sneaks to the window and looks in.

It takes him a moment, between the dim lighting and how the room is positioned. The room isn’t square, but round, with a curved low ceiling; but there, tucked to one side, propped up against a wall, is a human-shaped lump.

Molly pulls the bolt back as quietly as he can, and hurries into the room, kneeling down next to his friend, and only barely manages to keep control of the rage he can feel starting to build in his gut.

Caleb is far too still, and looks much smaller when not engulfed in his coat and scarf; he looks gaunt, even for him.

Caleb’s wrists are caught in front of him in a set of heavy irons, a short rigid bar running between them. Blood, mostly dried, covers his forearms and hands, and oh merciful gods, his  _ hands _ . Molly can’t be sure without looking closer, but most if not all of Caleb’s fingers have been broken. The thieves wanted to make certain Caleb couldn’t cast, and they’d been exquisitely thorough.

Caleb doesn’t seem to have noticed Molly is there, his head tilted back against the wall, his eyes closed. Molly is afraid to touch him, but he needs to start getting Caleb up if they’re going to get him out.

“Caleb, hey, you in there?”

Caleb’s face twitches, but his eyes don’t open, his head shifting minutely from side to side.

“ _ Du bist nicht echt _ .” His voice is quiet, rough, and so utterly devoid of emotion Molly gets a chill up his spine.

He wants to gentle Caleb’s way out of whatever this is, but there’s no time. He doesn’t know when the thieves might show up, and Caleb can’t protect himself right now. He reaches up to place a hand on Caleb’s face and realizes that some of the marks he’d thought were dirt are bruises, some wine-dark, and a few older, greening at the edges. He makes contact and Caleb twitches again, making another soft noise at the movement. His eyes slide open, and after a second focuses on Molly though he still looks hazy.

“You are a very convincing hallucination.”

Molly smiles, though it’s strained at the edges. “If that's your way of saying I look a vision, I'll take it. But I think you've enjoyed these people's hospitality long enough. What do you say we get you out of here, yeah?”

Caleb hums noncommittally, his eyes sliding closed again.

The manacles around Caleb’s wrists aren’t attached to anything, and Caleb isn’t bound in any other way. Molly knows he doesn’t have the expertise to get the cuffs off quickly and safely; he doesn’t want to hurt Caleb any worse, so those will have to wait until he can get to Nott. He moves further to the side, and slides an arm behind Caleb’s back, and one under his knees and stands, taking Caleb with him. Caleb has never been an especially hefty man, but Molly is concerned at how light he feels. That’s something to be dealt with later, though.

He’s out the cell door and part-way down the tunnel when he hears Nott’s voice in his head.

“Nothing here, have you found him? _You-can-reply-to-this-message_.”

“I’ve got him, on my way to you.”

Molly doesn’t tend to actually pray much, an occasional thought to the Moonweaver here and there when he thinks about it, but right now he’s praying hard as he can, that none of the thieves are between him and his friends, that they get out of here safely, that the harm done to Caleb isn’t irreversible. 

He comes around a turn and almost runs into Nott, who’s rushing in his direction. They barely avoid a collision, and Nott yelps quietly, neatly side-stepping Molly before she realizes he’s carrying Caleb, and her eyes grow wide.

“Oh gods,  _ oh gods _ , is he, is he-?”

“He’s alive, but not in great shape. Where are the others?”

“They found the thieves, and we were winning. They said to find you and they’d meet us outside.”

“Right. Lead the way, shoot anything that isn’t our friends.”

Nott knocked a bolt into her crossbow, her expression hardening. “Got it.”

The way out of the caves is a lot faster than when they’d first come in. Nott only has to shoot one person on the way out, and soon they’re bursting out into the cold, fresh air. They’d hit at night, hoping to catch the thieves unaware, and it’s worked; Molly is glad for Caleb’s sake, as well. He doesn’t think Caleb would handle bright light very well right now if he’s spent the past week in an underground cell.

They make their way over to a small stand of trees and Molly is careful to set Caleb down so his back is propped up, hands again cradled in his lap.

Molly lights his lantern and sets it down in the snow; he knows Nott can see pretty well in the moonlight, but he doesn’t want to take any chances.

“You’re best with locks, I thought it best to leave these for you.”

Nott leans in, looking at the cuffs, and curses under her breath as she reaches for her lockpicks.

“If you’ve got this, I’m going back in to help the others.”

Nott nods, no longer paying Molly much attention as she gets to work on the manacle locks, and Molly turns, stalking back towards the cave entrance, drawing his swords across his neck so they both flare blue. He hopes the others have left at least one or two of the thieves for him.

Molly is in luck- there are still a few of the thieves left. He doesn’t have the words, even in Infernal, for what he wants to do to them, but he’s never been cruel by nature, and he doesn’t intend to start now. He carves his way through their numbers with deadly efficiency, and by the time he’s finished, Fjord, Beau, and Jester are staring at him. He flicks the blood off his blades, and wipes them clean on the shirt of one of the dead thieves at his feet before turning to go.

“Come along then.”

The others follow after him, and he can hear Beau whispering loudly to the other two, asking them what the fuck is going on, but they don’t have answers either. They make it back outside, and Molly beelines for where he can see the faint glow of his lantern under the trees.

When he gets there, Nott’s gotten the cuffs off, and Molly has the thought that the swift end he dealt the thieves was too quick. The blood on Caleb’s arms had been the result of small spikes embedded on the inner surface of the cuffs, likely intended to break his concentration if he moved too much; seeing the amount of blood, Molly can’t help but wonder how many times Caleb tried casting anyway.

There’s a soft gasp behind him, and he’s being pushed aside as Jester runs forward, her magic already dancing in purple and blue sparks at her fingertips. It’s a matter of seconds for it to work, the wounds under the blood healing, and Caleb’s fingers straightening out with barely audible popping sounds. The bruising on his face looks less severe, though he still looks rough. Molly realizes Caleb is shivering, and wants to kick himself, leaving Caleb out here wounded without a coat in winter. He shrugs his own colorful coat off, and steps forward to drape it over Caleb’s still form. Through the whole of Jester healing him, he hasn’t woken up, and only the faint shivering Molly can see makes him even look alive.

“We’ll go look for his stuff.” Fjord grabs Beau by the arm and pulls her back toward the caves, and Molly nods absently, all his focus on Caleb. Nott situates Jester on one side of Caleb, and Molly on the other- ‘Tieflings run hot, this will warm him up faster.’- and settles herself on Caleb’s lap. Molly understands the feeling. He worries if he closes his eyes for a moment Caleb might disappear, fade away while they’re not looking even though he knows-  _ knows-  _ that won’t happen. It’s harder to get his heart to believe it though.

Not long passes before Fjord and Beau return, triumphant, Caleb’s coat, scarf, and book holsters, complete with books, in their arms.

Jester gets Caleb in her arms, wrapped securely in both his coat and Molly’s, and off they go, back to the inn in Snowdrop Hollow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb wakes up warm and dry, in no pain, and is sure for the briefest of moments that he’s dead.

Caleb wakes up warm and dry, in no pain, and is sure for the briefest of moments that he’s dead.

He doesn’t think it’s so bad if this is what being dead feels like, but he’s surprised he feels so corporeal. He’d always assumed he’d be a bit more...floaty.

He opens his eyes to discover that no, he isn’t dead. He’s in his and Nott’s room at the Nimble Bird in Snowdrop Hollow, and is covered with an unreasonable number of blankets, and laying on a frankly ridiculous pile of pillows. His last memories involve cold, pain, and the sort of thoughts that he can usually distract himself from. In the caves, though, he’d had no way to avoid them; no books, no company, he could barely even pace around after the first few days, just this own mind for company. 

It had been dangerous company to keep for that long.

He’s still considering whether or not to attempt escaping the pile of blankets when the door opens and Molly walks in, another blanket in his hands. He startles when he sees Caleb looking back at him, but recovers quickly, a grin spreading over his face.

“You’re awake! Fantastic. We’ve all been worried, you know.” He crosses the room and unfolds the blanket, spreading it out on top of the bed before Caleb can stop him.

“Why all of the blankets?”

Molly looks sheepish for a moment, then shrugs, rubbing at the back of his neck. “You were very cold when we found you, and well, we wanted to be really sure you were warm. Are you? Warm enough, I mean.”

“I think this many blankets is more than sufficient, thank you.” Caleb tries to push himself up to lean back against the mound of pillows, and Molly reaches out to help him. Caleb manages to hold most of his flinch back; he knows Molly would never hurt him, but there’s been a distinct lack of touches that don’t hurt over the last...the last... _huh_.

“How long was I gone?”

Molly finishes getting Caleb situated against the pillows. “It was just over a week between us losing you and finding you again yesterday. We brought you back here, and you’ve been asleep since last night. It’s early afternoon right now.”

Caleb nods, absorbing the information and resetting his internal clock. Normally going into a cave doesn’t affect his ability to know what time it is, but he imagines being stuck underground for a week along with other stressors would be enough to throw anyone off. He looks down at his hands where they rest in his lap, and flexes his fingers. He remembers the thieves breaking them after he’d tried casting a Sleep spell on the guard who’d come to bring him food, using sand he’d found on the floor of his cell. The cuffs had gone on not long after that, interest in using him as a caster on their side quickly overtaken by the need to keep him under control. Between the cuffs and his fingers he hadn’t been able to concentrate worth a damn, all chances of using magic to escape gone; and without his magic, what was he?

‘Utterly useless’ was what, as it turned out.

He’d sat in his cell, cold, miserable, in pain and hungry, and waited for either his friends or the thieves to decide what would become of him. It wasn’t going to be  _ him  _ that made a difference in the whole mess. 

He wasn’t sure at what point delirium had set in, either due to the broken bones or the wounds caused by the manacles, or both; it didn’t really matter what the cause was, the results were the same. Faces of people he knew, alive and dead. The ones he knew to be alive were the worst; at least with the dead, he had some grasp on the fact that they weren’t real. Just because he was seeing his parents didn’t mean they were there, however real their screams sounded. It was when he saw and heard people who  _ could  _ have been there that he had a problem. Was he actually hearing Nott’s voice- the product of a Message spell- or was he imagining it? Was that flash of color in the barred window Jester, or was it all in his head?

Over and over again, they proved to be false, the effects of stress and sensory deprivation on his already broken mind. After a while, he’d stopped bothering to respond, lacking the energy to do much other than sit in his cell and wait for whatever end he would come to.

“Caleb?”

Molly’s voice is soft, careful, but Caleb still starts, pulled abruptly out of his thoughts. He’s not in the cave, not anymore. He’s in his room, safe, and among friends. It may just take him a while longer for it to sink in properly.

“ _Ja_ , I am fine...well, no, I am not fine, but I think I will _be_ fine. It will just take time.”

“That’s good to hear.” Molly reaches for him again, slower this time, and gently squeezes Caleb’s shoulder. “Would you like me to fetch Nott for you? She was being a bloody menace downstairs, I’m guessing everyone will be glad of a break.”

The corner of Caleb’s mouth twitches up, in the barest hint of a smile. “That would be wonderful, yes, thank you.”

Molly turns to go, and Caleb’s hand reaches out, faster than Molly would have given him credit for at the moment, and catches at the colorful sleeve of Molly’s shirt.

“Wait.”

Molly turns back, eyebrows raised.

Caleb doesn’t quite meet Molly’s eyes, keeping them lowered more in the vicinity of Molly’s jawline.

“You are the one who got me out,  _ ja _ ?”

Molly squirms, glancing off of to the side, wondering at the flush he can feel starting at the tips of his ears. “Well, we _all_ rescued you-”

“Mollymauk.” Caleb’s voice is quiet but insistent, and when Molly glances up, Caleb’s eyes are on his.

“Yes, I’m the one who found your cell and carried you out.”

Caleb nods, pacified, and lets go of Molly’s sleeve to fall back against his pillows. “Thank you, Molly.”

“Any of us would have done it. Though it would have been a treat to see Nott try to carry you.”

“Yes, but it was you who did it. So thank you.” Caleb’s smile is small and tired, but genuine.

“Er, you’re welcome. I’ll just go get Nott for you, then.” 

“That would be nice, thank you.” Caleb’s eyes are already closing, and his head is getting heavier on the pile of pillows. By the time the door closes softly behind Molly, Caleb is out like a light.

**Author's Note:**

>  _'Du bist nicht echt.'_ \- 'You are not real.'
> 
> Feel like asking a question, flailing at me, or just saying hello? Come find me on tumblr at [Analisegrey](http://analisegrey.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
